I'd like to thank WilmamSlice for his thought provoking comment on a somewhat random post I made recently. I think it deserved to be explored further and this blog post is the result.
Age verification is certainly current news as developers, governments, social media platforms and others all struggle with protecting children and young adults from obscene or abusive content. Governments, instead of actually forcing tech companies to improve their policies and moderation, or get them to enforce existing policies, are putting the burden on the consumer. It's somewhat insane that in order to protect our youth we are requiring them to provide even more personal details (biometrics, government I.D.s, etc.) to the very companies that are taking advantage of them today. Even if we can safety stop young adults from accessing social media platforms, there is little discussion about how to change all platforms for the better.
"Hey, we know it's a sewer but at least we can keep our youth from playing in the crap that the rest of us deal with"
What if we took a different approach and actually prepared our youth for accessing social media. Using the Fediverse, our government could implement a social media training course starting at the secondary level. Each provincial education ministry would establish their own instance, self-hosted or out-sourced. Those instances would adhere to a strict operating policy, strict moderation and each high school student in the province would have access after verification by individual schools. Now you have a protected space that is only for students and teachers, with no algorithm that drives negative engagement, no data collection, no advertising, and no outside influence.
Social media training and awareness can now become part of the Ministry of Education curriculum. Teach our youth the basics of using social media, the expected norms of engagement, how to research and fact check what you see in your feed, and how to respond. Perhaps allow limited federation with approved outside accounts to provide a more realistic community. Potentially open up a separate community for teachers and parents focused at the school level. The idea could be extended to every university and college in Canada where a Fediverse application is offered as the official communication channel for the students and faculty. Then potentially add courses for first year students on more advanced use of social media, and subsequent years teaching development of open source software.
I believe that our high schoolers would be better prepared for social media after 4 years of training and experience in a protected environment. Canada would also be building personal digital independence and sovereignty at a grassroots level. Every year approximately 380,000 students would graduate from high school with the potential that each of them has used open source social media operated and managed in Canada. How many would maintain their Fediverse presence and continue to build a Canadian Community? If we could implement this idea, it would be awesome to find out.
Paul Busch, @ElbowsUpforDigitalSovereignty
